ATM

"Please, please, no!" He slammed his hand against the ATM, fingers scrabbling at the money slot, digging hopelessly for the colorful currency well beyond his reach. He snatched another card from his wallet, shaking as he tried to orient it correctly, shoving against the resisting maw, knees bending with the effort. The machine finally sucked in the card and he fumbled his way through the many verification screens, sounding out the questions as he searched his brain for correct answers in a barely familiar language. At the PIN screen he froze, not even sure which card he'd used, then helplessly tapped in a series of numbers, knowing they were no good.

Again and again he tried, littering the ground with credit cards, debit cards, even a membership card to a museum back home. Finally he gave up, turning and sliding hopelessly down until he crouched at the base of the machine in a yellow-orange puddle of streetlight. He stared past a dripping dumpster at the phone booth across the street, then down at the depleted phone card in his hand. It was a collectible, worth hundreds in that obscure market, and he would have given anything to sell it for cash right then. Cash he could use to call his father, dying abruptly four thousand miles away.

As prompted by Nightmare Fuel

Department Store

The boy hated that store. It was magic, but not in a good way. His mother called it different names - Macy's, Nordstrom's, Nieman Marcus - and the outside sometimes looked different, but he knew it was really just one store. It looked the same every time they went. And they went a lot. He begged his mother not to go, but she had no patience for his protests. “You love going on the carousel!” she would say, as if that was enough, but the carousel was like the store – same thing over and over again, up and down around and around. Besides the carousel appeared and disappeared without pattern, just like the parking lots and trees outside the store. “There's nothing to DO!” he would shout, and she would get angry and tell him not to cry, as if he could turn off his frustration and helplessness.

She was always tired at home, staring distantly at the windows or hungrily at the computer screen. She would slip in a DVD when he asked her to play, turn her back when he shouted “Mommy! Watch me! Mommy! Mommy! You're not LOOKING! Watch this!” as he clowned around trying desperately to make her laugh, to make her see him. He would steal her cell phone, begging her to color with him or build something, but she would snatch it back, shouting, “Don't grab!” and then stand up so tall he couldn't reach; he was left with her knees for company.

But that store was magic. It gave her purpose and intent. Head up, focus tight, alert, searching. The colorful signs atop the racks were scanned, absorbed, ignored or noted in moments. She circled the racks, screeching the hangers left and right so he only saw glimpses of her between the clothes. He knew her ankles better than her face. 

He never did figure out what she was looking for. Sometimes he would grab at the hanging fabric and say “Oh, this is nice!” like she did, but she always sighed and told him “Don't touch! I don't want to have to pay for that.”

When they went, after they parked, she tugged him from the car and hastily buckled him in to the stroller. She would toss plastic bags of goldfish and cartons of juice within reach on the tray, then speed toward the door, moving faster than anywhere else, and with a little bounce. As they entered she thrust her cell phone at him, placating his sadness with distraction. He learned to fall into that flat dull world but eventually the battery would die and still his mother would be questing. He held in his sighs and fidgets because fussing caused her to flare into anger and shake the stroller until his stomach hurt.

Inside she insisted that he stay in the stroller while she stalked the aisles. He was so big it pinched but when he tried to tell her she would say "I can't have you running around, you might get stolen!" as if the stroller kept him safe while she hunted. He didn't understand her fear, so he looked around with suspicious eyes. The floors were slippery stone that shone like water. The nubby gray carpets were like cloth sidewalks. The racks of clothes reminded him of bushes and trees, but there was no wind or sun. It smelled funny, like sweet dust, and made him sleepy. His mother didn't mind. At home she made not-funny jokes about going to the store so he could take a nap, as if his presence alone wore her out. But she really told him to stay in the stroller to keep him out of the way.

All of which is why he wasn't surprised when the strange skinny plastic people came to life. What was surprising was how nice they were.

They approached slowly, quietly. His eyes had been drooping; he was bored beyond tears into indifference. When he saw them moving his eyes grew wide, he opened his mouth to shout, but then he stopped, fascinated. They weren't scary. They didn't move fast or sneak around. He didn't know what game they were playing, but they stood in front of him, arms open, inviting him to join. He looked around for his mother but she had wandered off. He squirmed out of his buckles, stopped to pick up a couple of goldfish, and walked over.

“Can I play?” he asked. They nodded. He reached out, slowly, and took the tall one's hand, and they started walking. The hand was stiff and had no fingers, but it was gentle. They all trooped up the escalator to the beds and pillows department, and he was invited to climb up onto the biggest bed there. He stood, taller than the encircling mannikins, and wondered. He'd never been allowed on one of the beds before. They lifted a small fellow up, and he began to bounce gently. They boy laughed. The adults raised their arms, creating a safety rail, and the two of them started jumping. Leaping and laughing, every time he stumbled or flew toward the edge he was caught and tenderly returned. Finally he collapsed, to tired even to giggle.

They collected him then, the largest carrying him – head on shoulder – back down the escalator. He panicked for a moment, begging not to go back, but a gentle pat on the back calmed him. Instead they went to the big TVs and piled together on a couch to watch his favorite movie. He had never had friends to watch with, and he became so excited that he shouted his favorite lines and grabbed their hands at the scary part. They laughed silently, enjoying his happiness as much as the movie.

Afterward they went swimming. The shiny bright floor, so highly polished, melted before them into a golden liquid that was warm and dry and held him up when he plunged in. They cavorted, fully clothed, his noise echoing through the store without disturbing anyone. When he tired they sat on the edge and plotted more adventures through the jewelry and makeup counters, dressing up as kings and queens and putting on plays. They played hide and seek between the racks, which was particularly easy for him since some of the people didn't have heads, and others had no eyes and they all had to feel their way to him. They made up indescribable games that made sense only to the players, and through it all they surrounded him with love.

The store was magic. He had friends who paid attention to him, who soothed his hurts and listened to his stories. He was never hungry. There were no grownups to lecture him. He was given complete freedom, and the store which had been so odious became his playground. But finally it had to end. He collapsed in tears, begging to stay. He loved them. Didn't they love him? He grew angry and yelled, striking the hands that reached for him. He wanted to play and play and play with them. He didn't want to be in the store every day, just waiting for his mother, doing nothing, tied down. When he finally calmed to hiccups they bowed their heads and sweetly embraced him, then walked him back. The biggest attempted with stiff hands to buckle the boy in, but the boy took the hands and kissed them instead, laying his cheek against them. Finally they all waved a quiet goodbye, plastic expressions never changing. He felt their sadness and knew it would never happen again. He leaned his head back and dozed off, once again waiting for his mother.

He never knew how long he spent with them. He hadn't aged, and his mother never noticed he was gone. But if he'd had his many adventures in the real world they would have taken weeks. Years later he tried to explain that afternoon to someone he trusted. She was horrified, first by his mother's neglect, and then by the idea of a child terrified by mannikins that came to life. No, no, he protested. They were wonderful. It was, it was . . . He couldn't finish.

As he grew older, he understood his mother's desperate attempt to find meaning in pointless acquisition. He grew and exchanged the boredom of the stroller for the tedium of school, and then the dull gray beige of a cubicle farm. He paced the same sidewalks, ate the same food, visited the same stores. And many years later he looked back and understood what he'd tried to say so long ago. It was . . . magical. That had been the very best day of his life.

Prompted by Nightmare Fuel

The Eyes Have It

She dressed in black and wore ice blue eyes. Her yearbook picture featured her dripping blood and clinging to a cemetery cross. She was brash and fearless, and I longed to be her.  

Half our class attended the reunion just to see how she turned out. She wasn't there, of course. Gossip that night swirled above cheap polyester tablecloths and between tacky carnation centerpieces and somehow she was in every conversation, each with a different theory of where she was and what she was doing, and all remembering her amazing eyes.

We had been friends of a sort. I was bookish and kept my head down. Still, I somehow made peace with every clique while belonging to none. She, too, was an outsider, although by choice rather than happenstance. Some days she would sit with me in whatever corner I'd found, alighting like a hawk on a wire, watching with unblinking eyes the hubbub all around us. She didn't feel obliged to chat; however, she would occasionally share a wry observation that finally made sense hours later. It was as if she saw more than the rest of us. I never mentioned how much I admired her.

We continued our acquaintance through college and beyond. I was honored whenever she called, dropping everything to meet her for coffee or to catch an esoteric indie film which she understood and I mentioned at cocktail parties in order to seem more interesting. I never initiated contact; it seemed implausible that she'd want to be my friend. Still, we got together nearly every month, commiserating on school and professors and sharing war stories about our dating lives. She followed an esoteric course of study, exploring feminism and sociology before finally finding her path in psychology. Her keen skills of observation, first honed in high school, brought swift clarity to patients whose relief outweighed any nervousness at her piercing gaze or somber outfits. My interests were more pedestrian until I tangled botany, anthropology, and biology and found myself heading to the rain forest to try to find a cure for cancer. When I got back I suddenly was the interesting one, with stories of having lived -- and shared rites with -- cannibalistic natives in order to collect unfamiliar plant species. At dinner she turned her blue, blue eyes on me and I basked in the attention, reveling in the role reversal, as if I finally had achieved my dream not just of being with her, but being her. That night she told me she'd always admired my style. When we kissed my high-school self leaped for joy.

Our romance was fast and hot and died just as quickly when she came to see how empty I was. She'd mistaken my fascination with her for an actual personality. The disappointment was palpable as she packed to leave my apartment the final time, while I sat, shocked, terrified of losing her. I couldn't imagine what shape I would take without her as my mirror, my muse, my model. I had spent so much time wanting to be her I'd never learned to be myself.

She graced me with one final kiss, the same gothic girl I hungered to be, black dresses and wry laughter and piercing blue eyes. I tasted her laughter. I tasted our past. I tasted what I could become.

I ate her eyes last.

This post was prompted by Bliss Morgan's "Nightmare Fuel" challenge.

Kodak Moments

Irene stood at the window, gazing westward and drinking watery oatmeal from a mug. Her eyes focused far beyond the green undulations of treetops, as if she could actually see the funeral taking place a thousand miles away. It wasn't that she wanted to be there. Rather, she was tugged by the gravity of obligation, as if her attendance was somehow required despite the distance that had separated her from her father for years.

Behind her a commotion arose, a tussle over which station to watch. She turned and observed the careless argument between dorm-mates until they finally settled on a soap opera that interested no one, but was better than anything else. Irene walked to a chair and sat, pretending to be absorbed. Instead she slipped into a flicker of memories of her father.

Her first bicycle was pink and the fanciest thing she'd ever owned. A peace offering, contingent on a night's stay with his former family. He had assembled it with strong competent hands, putting her in charge of bolts and tools and saying please and thank you when he asked for parts. They presented it to her mother and he gave Irene all the credit for putting it together. She bashfully accepted the lie, carrying it in her heart like a prize. He promised to teach her to ride without training wheels; shortly afterward he tried drunkenly to crawl into bed with her mother and was ordered in harsh whispers to leave in the middle of the night. Irene hadn't understood his crime – she often climbed into bed with her mother – but her confusion was overshadowed by disappointment.

Years later cold wind slid up her skirt as she stumbled over frozen tire tracks in a Sunday-morning-empty parking lot. The crossing felt like a prisoner exchange, despite the effort she had made to look nice. Her father lingered in the warm Saab until she was nearly there, but made up for it by stepping quickly around the front and opening her door. As they drove away she glimpsed her mother, still anxiously standing by the open door of the rusty old sedan.

By Irene's final, and longest, visit, she was rarely invited to his house. He'd gotten dogs, a promotion, married, and no longer had time for her. The sudden invitation must have come from the new wife. Still Irene combed through her closet to create the most impressive outfits possible. The first night she and the wife baked an apple pie for his birthday. He was effusive in his praise, but his grandiose and supposedly charming monologues were peppered with statements attributing Irene's brains and looks solely to his parentage. By the second day Irene decided she liked his wife more than him. By day three Irene's love for her mother, diluted by teenage angst, was so rekindled by his comments that her mother was baffled – gratefully – by the warmth of Irene's greeting at the end of the long weekend.

“Change the channel!”

Irene jumped at the sudden shout. She glared, still seeing the pie alight with candles and and her father's cheery face, and tried to reorient herself. She stared up at the television and caught a glimpse of a sappy advertisement featuring a loving father and devoted daughter before the channel changed.

“You know how much I hate these stupid commercials! They remind me of my family.” Mike finished with a grin. Everyone laughed. No one noticed when Irene's tears began to fall.

Note: I submitted this for NPR's Three Minute Fiction contest. Someday I'll try again (with a different piece)

Doppelganger

Have you ever met the person
you woulda
coulda
shoulda
been?

Just a little bit more interesting
for having followed your dreams.
Just a little bit
more fun.
The one who can do
those things
that you never quite picked up.
Who finishes projects
You once started
but left by the wayside
with a touch of regret.
The one who looks
a little like you
only better, somehow.

Have you ever met
your doppelganger?

Did you shake hands,
hiding your longing?
Were you
a little too close
-- too similar --
for vengeance dreams?

Have you ever met
the person
you were meant to be?

Attend Me . . .

Note: I work in a public elementary school. One of my primary tasks is attendance; I review which students are at school, or not, I hand out tardy slips to those who come in late, and I try to track down those who don't come in at all.

Attend. We generally use it to mean "show up", but there's a deeper meaning: to be present, to care for, to take charge. Every day part of my job is to review the attendance at our elementary school. Over time I see patterns emerge -- illnesses that sweep through the school classroom by classroom, religious holidays that collect disparate children into faithful solidarity, weather affecting only those who don't have a car. On occasion I see evidence of truancy and must call in a social worker to address the issue. Attendance is a small task, but there are larger ramifications for both safety and education.

In our school some children hardly miss a day, and are never late. I barely recognize them. Others I know by first and last name because every morning they come to the office five, ten, fifteen minutes late. As a parent and volunteer in the classroom, I can attest to a parallel trend: the same children who are late every day often are the ones who don't turn in their homework. They struggle to read and keep up with their peers. They don't have a support network that values their education.

These patterns I see, these falling lines of disappointment and failure, are not tied to race or class. Some poor families fight nearly impossible odds to get their children to school on time. Networks of cousins and aunts and friends and neighbors fill in gaps and make sure that the students are there on time and ready to learn. At home they have space to read and someone to review their work. No matter how late, or how tired, someone is there to help. Every resource available through school or grants or third-party programs are employed to make sure their children will make it. And they do.

At the same time some wealthy families whose children dress impeccably and have all the right props are allowed to stay up late watching movies and lollygag their way to school. They sleep through class. Homework is seen as an unnecessary nuisance. Their extracurricular activities are given much attention; school gets short shrift. The families have no expectations of them; they have none for themselves. Their actions have no consequence, and they have no shame in seeing me first thing, day after day, if they come in at all.

A story: last week a parent called, an hour after school started, to let us know that her (eleven or twelve year old) child would be riding a bike to school, probably leaving home soon (mom wasn't there) and would take about 45 minutes. She asked that we make sure the child called upon arrival.

An hour and a half later, the child still hadn't shown up. The school's main secretary returned from a meeting, heard the situation, and informed me that up after the 45 minutes passed I should have considered it a case of a missing child. She immediately called the district's office of Safety and Security, asking them to send an officer to the student's house. I got on the phone and started calling people on the student's contact list. Mom didn't answer, so I left a message. On the third call I reached a grandparent who told me that the student had decided not to go to school and was at home with an older sibling. We eventually spoke with the actual student to confirm the story. Mom never did call us back.

So. I totally dropped the ball. I am extremely grateful that the child wasn't kidnapped or injured. But I question why in the world this is the school's responsibility? Sure, I can understand if a child was dropped off at school and we couldn't find him. But we had no control over when the student set out from home (or didn't in this case), nor could we know the route used to get to school. Heck, mom apparently anticipated that -- she allotted 45 minutes for a ride of less than a mile. In addition, if the parent was expecting a phone call, why wasn't SHE the one to raise the alarm after her deadline had passed? Finally, if she knew her child wasn't going to school after all, shouldn't she have let us know?

There is an entire industry of blame in our country predicated on holding teachers, administrators, and schools responsible for poorly educated students. As an eyewitness to the education process I have to ask, why are parents (and students) not also held accountable?

Traditionally, schools act in loco parentis -- in place of parents. Through the years the scope of those responsibilities have grown. Even before the bell rings staff provide food, shelter, discipline, and medical care to our students. I agree with most of those additions. However, as a parent I still consider my children to be in my custody until they get to the schoolhouse door, and I believe my responsibility for them and their actions never ceases, regardless of their location or company. I require my children to not just be present in school, but to attend. Their education is not just a right, but their personal responsibility. It seems to me that some parents are forgetting that.  Ultimately the school gets blamed for their poor performance, but really it's the parents who are failing their children.

Dishwasher

My husband takes great pride in his family tradition of thriftiness. I have to admit, that can wonderful. We have genuine antique glass door knobs throughout the house, salvaged from alleys throughout the city. I can always find a twist tie or small piece of string when I need them. Our bank account is healthy.

But sometimes frugal crosses the line into stingy.

When I was pregnant with our first child, my husband remodeled our kitchen. It was tiny before, and not much bigger afterward – maybe 125 square feet – but when he was finished I had drawers to store things, shelves to store more things, and he had somehow made room for a dishwasher. It wasn't quite top-of-the-line, but a generous gift from my Aunt P made it possible for us to buy a really nice machine. It had a disposer in the bottom so stray food particles would be ground up and washed away. The top rack was adjustable. The flatware basket was in the door and could be removed for easy emptying. Boy did I love it! Bottles, high chair parts, daily dishes – my miracle machine could handle anything. So when we moved to our next house five years later, there was no question: we brought the dishwasher with us.

Two years ago I started noticing a little grime on my dishes. I took the dishwasher apart (thank goodness for internet DIY instructions) and found a couple pieces of broken glass and some bone bits in the bottom. I emptied a clogged filter then put everything back together. Sure, the (now eight year old) dishwasher was a little noisier than when we first got it, but considering how often we ran the thing, it was doing pretty well. Except, it wasn't. Gunk started building up. I was having to rinse glasses before I put them away. I took it apart again but found nothing.

We spent $100 to have an appliance repairman take a look. He found nothing.

My mom learned that dishwashing soaps had been reformulated to remove phosphates. I switched brands, then I switched again. Noisier, dirtier. Over time the top rack broke, and we jerry-rigged a repair. Some of the rubber coating on the racks peeled off. We tried a second appliance repair place. Another $100, glasses still grimy, plates not quite clean.

I started making noises about replacing the dishwasher. I began reading reviews, assessing features. DH finally heard and in May I came home from work to find a gaping hole where the dishwasher had been.

There were three salvaged machines on the back porch.

He installed the first one in June. It didn't work. After three days of tinkering it was returned to the back porch. The second didn't work, either. The third turned on and filled, but wouldn't drain.

The kids learned how to manually wash up. I did a lot of grilling to minimize dishes.

Mid-July I brought in Ken. Our favorite repair guy, he'd fixed our fridge when a stray magnet caused the motor to burn out. Ken came out, tinkered and futzed with number three. He left and came back to replace the mother board. He checked the plumbing. He visited three times (for only $175 total), but never could get it to work. In the end it was exiled to the back porch with the other two.

Two months had passed. DH was out of used dishwashers. He offered our original troublemaker to Ken in trade. Ken agreed. He came back one more time, with a low-end machine of his own. He installed it, plumbed it, ran it. No matter that there was no sanitize cycle. Who cared about a pre-rinse stage. We had a dishwasher!

The kids and I had gotten into a routine. We continued to wash the dishes by hand, afraid to jinx ourselves. Finally, realizing that school was about to start, I decided to switch back to mechanized cleanliness. DH was not happy. Before I could wash the first load, he asked when Ken was going to have the original dishwasher repaired and installed.

I gaped. Why, I asked, if we were just having the original repaired, would we have gone through all that nonsense with the other four? I was fine with the bare-bones box under the counter. It washed, it drained, it was installed. DH would have none of it. He thought I wanted our first dishwasher. By mid August Old Faithful was back in place. Ken had taken it apart as best he could, cleaned out the filters and washed the hoses. I sadly gave Ken a final check for $75 and fearfully loaded it up. My fears were justified.

So now, for the low, low price of $450 in repairs I have my ten-year-old dishwasher back under the counter. Sure, it's a little ghetto with the zipties holding the top rack together, and the rust streaks where the protective rubber is gone. And yeah, we have to rinse the dishes both before and after we run the machine. But we're a thrifty family, and I'm not putting any more money into this. Although I might spend $25 on a good counter-top dish rack. Doing the dishes by hand builds character. Right kids?